talking to her neighbors? Maybe they saw something.”
“I was reluctant to bug them so early, but now that it’s after eight o’clock and you’re beginning to see my point of view, I’m willing to try anything.”
Jones nodded his approval. “Why don’t you handle this floor while I head downstairs?”
“Fine. But if you find anything, please let me know immediately.”
“Will do,” he assured Payne. “And Jon? Keep the faith. We’ll find her.”
CHAPTER 9
KNOCKING on each door, Payne started with Ariane’s neighbor across the hall and slowly made his way down the corridor. Everyone that he talked to was friendly and immediately knew who Ariane was—females of her beauty tended to stand out. Unfortunately, no one saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. And no one could account for the duct tape over the front lock.
After speaking to the last of her neighbors on the second floor, Payne heard Jones running up the stairs in an obvious state of excitement.
“I think I’ve got a witness,” Jones exclaimed. “He’s waiting downstairs in the hall.” Within seconds, the two men were standing in front of the open door of apartment 101. “Mr. McNally, this is Jonathon Payne, Ariane’s boyfriend. Jon, this is Mr. McNally.”
Payne shook the hand of the elderly man while trying to observe as much as he could. McNally appeared to be in his mid-eighties, walked with the aid of a metal cane, and closely resembled Yoda from Star Wars—minus the green color. His apartment was cluttered with heirlooms and antiques, yet for some reason a framed Baywatch poster of Pamela Anderson hung near the entrance to his kitchen. “Mr. McNally, D.J. tells me that you might’ve seen something that could help me find Ariane?”
“Who the hell is D.J.?” the old man snapped. “I didn’t talk to any bastard named D.J.”
Jones looked at Payne and grimaced. “Sir? Remember me? I talked to you about two minutes ago. My name’s David Jones, but my friends call me D.J.”
“What the hell kind of person has friends that refuse to use his real name? You kids today. I just don’t understand your damn generation.”
“Sir, I don’t mind. D.J. is just a nickname.”
“A nickname?” he shrieked. “You think that’s a nickname? Horseshit! It’s just two capital letters. Why don’t you just use B.S. as your nickname instead? Because that’s what your nickname is: bullshit! When I was growing up, people used to have nicknames that said something about them, like Slim or Cocksucker, not pansy names like D.J.”
“Sir,” Payne interrupted, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I was wondering what you saw this morning. David said you saw something that could help me find my girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend? Who’s your girlfriend?”
Payne rolled his eyes in frustration. This was getting nowhere. “Ariane Walker. She lives upstairs in apartment 210.”
McNally pondered the information for a few seconds before his face lit up. “Oh! You mean the brunette with the dark eyes and the nice cha-chas? Yeah, I saw her bright and early, about an hour ago. She was wearing a red top and a short skirt. It was so small I could almost see her panties.” The elderly man cackled in delight as he pondered his memory of the beautiful girl. “That gal’s a real looker.”
Payne couldn’t agree with him more. She was the prettiest woman he had ever seen. The first and only person who had literally left him speechless, which was unfortunate since he was in the middle of a speech at the time.
A few years back, Payne had volunteered to speak to a group of convicted drunk drivers about the tragic death of his parents. The goal of the program was to make recent offenders listen to the horrors of the crime in order to make them think twice about ever drinking and driving again. Payne was in the middle of reliving his nightmare—describing the devastation he felt when he was pulled from his eighth-grade algebra class and told about the death of his parents—when his eyes focused on Ariane’s. She was standing off to the side, watching and listening with complete empathy. In a heartbeat, he could tell that she’d been through the same horror, that she’d lost a loved one in a similar nightmare. It didn’t matter if it was a brother, sister, or lover. He knew that she understood.
Payne managed to finish his heart-wrenching tale without incident, but when he started his conclusion, he found himself unable to take his eyes off of her. He knew he was there to make